The Bikers Against Child Abuse came to show their support and hold signs during the fifth annual Stand Up for Kids event at Elmore Park Saturday, April 14, 2012. Each sign had the age and gender of a child that was helped by the Children's Advocacy Center. (Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Stephen Spillman)

Some danced, some swayed and others just ate hot dogs, but nearly all of the 200-plus people in Leroy Elmore Park Saturday morning stayed on their feet stand against child abuse.

As part of the fifth-annual Stand Up for Kids event, volunteers, children’s advocates and other Lubbockites held one — and sometimes several — of the 665 pink and blue signs representing each child from the Lubbock area who needed assistance from the Children’s Advocacy Center in 2011.

“We’re all here to honor those kids who come through the Children’s Advocacy Center, because if we don’t stand up for them nobody will,” organizer Shawn Vandygriff told a crowd around a makeshift stage near South Loop 289 and Quaker Avenue.

Vandygriff, vice president of the Children’s Advocacy Center board and a supervisor with Children’s Protective Services, said the center provides counseling and legal services for victims of child abuse and their parents or guardians, who are not offenders.

The dancing, singing, hotdog eating and children’s hula contest of Saturday’s event were aimed to provide a contrast from the sometimes grim topic of child abuse, said Judy Powell, program director for the center.

“Child abuse is not warm and fuzzy, especially sexual abuse and abuse with serious violence,” she said. “But we try to make this event as fun for the kids as possible.”

And children like 12-year-old Logan Scarbrough seemed up for a good time.

Scarbrough was among two dozen youths who shook their hips, waved their arms and wore grass skirts and green leafy leis.

He seemed eager to take hula dancing lessons from Sunny Tidwell, a travel agent with National Travel, which assisted with the event.

The 12-year-old said he enjoyed learning a new skill and was glad to be part of an event raising awareness against child abuse.

“It’s getting out to everybody,” he said. “I think it’s so hard for all of the other kids who have to go through abuse.”